Butch Thunder Hawk – Weaponry
and Pipes
Butch
Thunder Hawk is a Hunkpapa Lakota artist originally from Cannonball,
North Dakota on the Standing Rock Reservation. He graduated from
Dickinson State University in North Dakota and attended the California
College of Art and Crafts in Oakland, California. Thunder Hawk
also studied tribal arts, including pipemaking, with elders at
Standing Rock. He has taught tribal arts at United
Tribes Technical College in Bismarck, North Dakota, since
the late 1970s. Many of the pieces for Monticello were created
during a special summer session held in 2001 in which Butch and
his students studied historic objects in the Peabody
Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University
and the North Dakota Heritage Center, gathered wood, rocks, earth
pigments and other materials, and made clubs, lances, and arrows.
Butch also created shields, two pipes, and a quiver and bowcase
for the project.
Butch
and his students used mane and tail hair from Nokota horses to
embellish the objects they created. Nokota horses formerly ran
wild in the Little Missouri badlands of western North Dakota and
are descended from early Indian and ranch stock. They have been
designated North Dakota’s “honorary equine”
or state horse. For more information on the Nokota horses, including
Target, whose tail hair hangs from the green shield in the Indian
Hall, see www.nokotahorse.org.
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Images: Butch Thunder Hawk holding shield with feathers and horse hair, photo by Castle McLaughlin; Red Badger, a Nokota stallion, photo by Castle McLaughlin.